


faintly I'll go, to take this head on

by ashintuku



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Food Issues, Force-Sensitive Finn, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-23
Updated: 2016-06-23
Packaged: 2018-07-16 18:52:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7280578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashintuku/pseuds/ashintuku
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time Rey tried something fresh and crunchy and good, she was in a cantina on a planet more green than she could have ever imagined, and the little treat was crisp on her tongue and a collection of flavours she had no memory of ever experiencing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	faintly I'll go, to take this head on

Eating had never been a luxury. 

Not once in her living memory could Rey remember having food just because she wanted food. Even the hazy-dream memories of Before were filled with growling bellies and sticky fingers picking through careful portions, tearing food into bits and pieces to make it seem like she had more to eat. She never went _hungry_ like she did later on, when Unkar Plutt decided that her finds weren't good for any portions and left her to starve for an evening, but there had never been an abundance of food, either. 

She learned to eat anything remotely edible, that had never been a sentient creature. The metallic aftertaste of metal-vultures sat heavy on her tongue, and sand-gritty water from animal wells filled her belly more often than not. Sometimes, Rey recalled with clarity, she would take shelter beside a moister farm's towers during sandstorms, when she was out scavenging and hadn't reached her AT-AT yet, and she would watch the farmers in their homesteads, passing around bowls of meat and fruit and bread. It wasn't a lot, but it was more than her; wasn't green and rubbery like her meals tended to be. And they had water, so much water, but that wasn't surprising. 

Moisture farmers tended to have plenty of water to waste, after all. 

~+~

Finn could barely stomach the food at the Resistance. 

He felt bad about it, certainly. The doctors and medi-droids and nurses all tried their best to find him something he could stomach, but it was either too sweet, or too salty, or too _much_. Doctor Kalonia brought him the blandest, most flavourless bowl of soup that the mess hall had in stock - and hadn't _they_ been insulted, she said with an amused grin - but even that had been too much for his stomach to take. 

Finn had never had food with flavour before. Just water, and nutrient packs, and protein bars that came sealed in foil packaging. It gave him energy, and the necessary vitamins and minerals he needed; the protein and the sugar and salt intake. He took pills for calcium, and pills for carbs, and the occasional pill for alertness. It never tasted like anything: just the taste of the capsule shell, or sometimes a slight powdery aftertaste from the medical residue. 

The first time Poe brought him a sandwich on real bread with real meat and real vegetables, he had taken four whole bites, every taste bud screaming in confusion, before he hurled it back up onto the ground and onto Poe's boots. He felt bad about the concern on his friend's face, even if Poe joked about his poor cooking skills after the fact. 

He stayed on a sketchy diet after that, though. 

~+~

Poe Dameron grew up on good food. 

His mother was no cook, though. Shara Bey was probably one of the worst cooks you could find on Yavin IV. Kes Dameron, though? Kes Dameron was a cooking _god_ , or so Poe thought for the majority of his life. Kes could whip up a savoury soup, or a flavourful salad, or a sweet pie or a stew or roast dinner out of seemingly thin air. The kitchen always smelled heavenly whenever Kes was cooking, and Poe would gravitate to the smell like it was calling to him. 

Poe learned from his father's elbow how to cook good meals. He learned how to season and how to judge a dish by its taste - always testing it himself, always making sure he was happy with the result. The first time Poe made his mother something, he made her a brownie because Shara Bey loved them, and she thanked him with chocolatey-kisses to both cheeks. 

Joining the Academy changed Poe's relationship with food: mostly, it made him stop expecting so much from people, because cooks for large communities couldn't be expected to make tasteful masterpieces like Kes could. The food was still _good_ , of course. It was still tasty and edible and that was the important thing. But Poe always liked going home for the holidays because it meant he got to eat something fantastic for a week straight. 

When Shara Bey died, Poe's appetite seemed to die with her, and so did Kes' passion for cooking. But that was to be expected, he guessed. 

~+~

His mother used to cook for him, before she sent him away. 

Simple meals from a dead world, made from memory and invention. He loved them all, even when they were a little too sweet for his tastes, or a little too burnt for his tongue. Too many spices and not enough moisture, because his mother had been a princess and then a commander but had never cooked a day in her life. 

He remembered the safe-soft-warm comfort of ewok kitchens; the fires burning merrily as mother and father and Uncle and Chewie sat around him, laughing as Threepio translated tales from the ewoks for their listening pleasure. He sat on his father's lap, and ate stew made out of roots and berries and syrupy sauce, and it dribbled all down his chin and stuck to his fingers. 

His father called him 'bucko' as he wiped his face clean, and Uncle would make objects around the campfire float because the Force had always been a plaything, and Ben watched with wide eyes and contentedness. 

His belly had never been empty a day in his life. 

~+~

The first time Rey tried something fresh and crunchy and good, she was in a cantina on a planet more green than she could have ever imagined, and the little treat was crisp on her tongue and a collection of flavours she had no memory of ever experiencing. 

She ate with the greediness of a scavenger, watching everyone around her to make sure they wouldn't go near her platter. Finn sat still, cautiously, more stiff than he had been even during their first antagonistic meeting, his platter of food untouched and his drink undrunk. She wondered at it; wondered if the Resistance fed their people so well that they didn't even think about leaving food to waste. When she stared at it for long enough, he caught her eye and carefully pushed his food towards her. 

She took it without thought, eating with a violence that only came from desperation. 

The water was cool and smooth as it slid down her throat, pure and filtered and _wonderful_ , and she hoped people realized how good they really had it. 

~+~

Finn vaguely remembered porridge with cinnamon and apples, held in a pale blue bowl, with large, dark, smooth hands carrying it and holding up a spoon for him. 

He felt, in his heart (through the Force, his mind whispered, through the _Force_ that kept him a perfect-imperfect soldier) that the hands belonged to his mother; that the soothing, singsong voice he could barely make out in the dream-memories was hers. He imagined she was beautiful, and an excellent cook, and he closed his eyes and tried to remember the smell when his stomach turned and he could handle no more than water and a protein bar. 

He sat next to Poe as the pilot made something on his little portable stove, watching him with open, curious eyes. A cane leaned against his chair, and scar tissue peeked out from under his shirt - a reminder that he had been so close, _so close_ , to losing what little freedom he had gained. The smells in the kitchen were good, cloyingly so, and he fidgeted with the fabric of his pants and wondered if he could ask the Force to help him keep his food down. 

_The Force doesn't work like that_ , Han Solo seemed to say, but he prayed anyway, just in case it did. 

~+~

Poe Dameron picked up cooking after he left the Academy and took up his posting in the fleet, because the mess hall food seemed to have gone downhill, and no one in his squad could fry an egg even if they tried. And honestly, they had _tried_. The Great Food Poisoning was not an event taken lightly, and Temmin never got over the stigma. 

He picked up cooking where he had left off, hazy daydreams of lessons with his father cropping up as he chopped and sliced and boiled and brewed. Poe became known as the pilot who always had food on him, and anyone who wanted something quick and good to eat knew to go to Dameron when he was groundside. His squad benefited the most, of course, eating well on missions and living the luxury of having favourite meals. 

But Poe only cooked the meals from home when he was on his own, or at his father's place on Yavin IV. Kes helped him, when his hands would let him, and the two of them spoke of benign things and important things over sliced bread, thick cuts of meat, and a cloud of spices that never seemed to really dissipate. 

He set aside all of that, though, making rice as plain as it grew and scooping it into a bowl in the hopes that Finn would be able to stomach it; hating the First Order a little bit more each time Finn had to carefully swallow anything flavoured with more than butter and salt down. 

(And even the butter was iffy.) 

~+~

The Jedi school didn't have food like his mother's; didn't have food cooked on ewok fires and crisped with love and laughter and care. 

The Jedi school had each of the young apprentices make their own meals, and his were always cold and a little tasteless, because he had never watched his mother cook or his father or Uncle or Chewie. The ewoks had never let him near the pots, chittering at him and shaking their heads, and he ate his tasteless meals and wondered what it said about him as a person. 

When he attacked and killed the apprentices a short five years later, he tasted blood on his tongue and bile in his throat, gripping his 'sabre in a white-knuckled grip, and decided that tasteless food said _nothing_ about a person. 

Absolutely nothing _at all_.

~+~

Rey tasted metal in her mouth, blood behind her teeth, and a darkness crept up her throat and cloaked over her like slick oil. 

The snow below her crunched with each shifting foot, Kylo Ren bleeding and gasping at her feet, the 'sabre in her hand a vivid, violent blue: and it pulsed with history and with violence; pulsed and showed her severed hands, wheezing men in black cloaks, and dying children, dying children everywhere. 

_Younglings, you killed the younglings, he said you killed younglings--_

She heaved, and then she was out of that snowy clearing and on her hands and knees on wet grass instead, throwing up her breakfast of bread cooked with berries in it and a tart jam that had sat on her tongue like a tease. A metal hand rested on her back; rubbed slow, soothing circles, and she closed her eyes: regret sitting on her stomach heavier than any hunger pains had ever sat before. 

But she swallowed back the bitterness of bile and memory, pushed herself up, and accepted the cool, clear water collected from rain with grateful hands. 

~+~

He leaned into Poe's side, slowly eating the meal in front of him; the General sitting in front of him and waiting for his verdict. 

There were spices, but the taste was half-burned away, and the meat was a little overcooked; a little too sweet for something meant to be savoury, but it worked, somehow. He felt something he thought was maybe the Force circle around him, and as he finished the meal, he thought that maybe, just maybe, the Force really _did_ work like that, and he grinned up at the General for all of three seconds before he was bending over and puking it up again. 

Poe rubbed his back, and the General smiled and said she had never been much of a cook anyway, but Finn felt alright. 

He'd get the hang of this food thing eventually. 

~+~

Poe cooked to clear his mind. 

As Finn slept silently on the cot behind him, his back to the door and his defences down for once, he cooked up a small meal for himself; the smells of home filling his tiny bunk that he shared with an ex-'trooper who had saved his skin. He cooked and he thought of his father, humming and laughing and cooking for his mother, and Poe hoped one day that Finn would be able to keep food down so that he could cook him up his mother's favourite meal. 

He thought that maybe, just maybe, his mother would approve of that. Or, at least, he hoped she would. 

~+~

He swallowed back a pill, and a protein bar, the blandness and the dryness coating his tongue, and he grimaced at the taste but forced himself to keep it down. 

All around him, stormtroopers accepted their rations with blank masks, and officers ate their meals like it was a required performance. Bottles of water were handed out: minerals and vitamins and anything that could be useful crammed into it before being bottled up and distributed. It left an aftertaste in his mouth, like plastoid or cellophane, and he thought back to his mother's less-than-perfect cooking and the ewoks with their roaring fires. 

He grimaced and threw back another pill, and told himself it would be enough. 

Eating was a necessity. 

Never a luxury.


End file.
